Horse Shoal - why a North Cardinal in the Crouch?

Burnham Bob

Burnham Bob

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Horse shoal is a North Cardinal – so presumably it should be passed on the northern side. However, the new Branklet buoy is a port hand mark if you are entering the Crouch. Steering then for the starboard mark Fairway 1 takes you south of Horse Shoal.
Theoretically I should make a dogleg to go north of Horse Shoal. I don’t think the timber boats going up to Wallasea do – and I never have. So why is Horse Shoal there? I’ve never found a problem with depth in that area although if you try and cut inside the Branklet you can find the spit at low water.
 
You need a UKHO chart with the right scale. One the UKHO Folio sheet, it shows there is a channel dredged to 4.0m (1989) from the north side of the Horse Shoal NCB to the south side of the No 1 SHB. As for soundings over Brankfleet there are only two: 2.9 sort of mid river (not mid Spit) and 4m right up against the spit itself where just to the south it shows 'Groynes'.
 
You prompted me to get out my first edition of Irving (1927). The only buoy between the West Buxey (to the east side of the Ray Sand) and Burnham was the Brankfleet Spit: "coming up river the small buoy marking Brankfleet Spit should be passed at a reasonable distance on the port hand. Half a mile above the spit there lies, almost in mid channel, an awkward shoal called variously the Bar or Horse, Shoal: it carries but 3ft over it at LWOS (at extraordinary low tides it has been known to dry out) and is some 500 yds in length and 200 yds broad having a channel carrying 12ft (LWOS) passing on either side of it. Of these channels the northern is the more frequent used by reason of the existence of suitable leading marks - Kangaroo Point in one with a white house set amongst trees at Creeksea (not to be confused with the Hotel opposite Creeksea) leads clear north of the Horse Shoal and also incidentally leads clear of the Brankfleet Spit to the northward of its buoy.

Looking at back editions of East Coast Rivers, the North Cardinal did not exist until 1989.
 
Now Tillergirl comes to mention it, I recall the dredged channel being marked on my leisure folio chart of the Crouch. it isn't, however, marked on any of the current standard nautical charts (3750 and smaller)


it's odd that the cardinal mark want replaced with a PHB anyway during the upgrade of the buoys
 
My 3750 is on board (and a little old) but the current UKHO leisure folio 5607.12 does while the current Imray folio 2000.9 does not. Guess Imray consider that after 24 years the dredged channel has filled in. As to the change from NCB to Lateral mark, I guess cost saving? But then that is a daft thing to say given the money spent on the rest of the buoyage.
 
A channel appears on the Jeppessen app on my iPad too. No depths associated with it, so as I'd never seen it on another chart I assumed that it was a relic.

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